Salman Rashid

Travel writer, Fellow of Royal Geographical Society

Euthanasia comes from the Greek eu meaning good and thanatos for death. My Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has three definitions for it. Firstly, ‘a gentle and easy death; secondly, ‘a means of bringing about such a death. Lastly it says, ‘action of bringing about such a death, esp. of a person who requests it as a release from incurable disease’. In plain speak folks call it mercy killing.

The last one clinches it. Plagued as this unfortunate country of Pakistan is at best by deadwood and at worst outright ill-wishers and perpetrators of evil against its very corpus, we could do with mass euthanasia. Going by the third definition of euthanasia, the people of Pakistan should request mercy killing of several hundreds of thousands of miscreants in order to save Pakistan from the sickness that those people are.

Thankfully the bastards who plagued this land in its early and formative years have rotted in their graves. Years ago, beginning in July 1977, every evening as I lay in bed under the high roof of the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters behind Log Area Mess, 45 The Mall, Peshawar, I used to pray for someone to inflict euthanasia on the Incubus of our Eleven Year-Long Night, the Grinning Demon of Islamisation. It is another thing that then I did not know how long the diseased vermin was going to be around.

It took the Lord in Heaven eleven years to come around to answering my daily prayer. That was time enough for the Incubus to contaminate this country permanently to suffer until the end of time. Thankfully one general with the god-awful name of beg(gar) colluded with his gods and masters in Washington to perform mercy killing. Beg(gar) gave the Incubus a crateful of mangos to gorge on during his flight. The resulting rather bad case of diarrhoea brought the whole C-130 down and we were delivered.

I was in Upper Swat when I heard the news and I danced for joy. Aside: please all readers be informed that I am not a Bhuttiya. I am not a votary of PPP; I cannot stick the current dispensation. I am a totally apolitical person who hates all politicians, civil and military alike. I know all of them are as crooked as a pig’s tail.

Now we are in need of mass euthanasia again. We could begin with semi-literate charlatans masquerading as ‘opinion makers’ on third rate TV channels and corrupting the minds of 200 million unthinking morons comprising the population of this illiterate country. The first one could be the crap-head whose hands are welded together in tepee shape. For some curious reason this dunderhead believes the finger tepee gives him the look of immense depth and gravity.

Though he now rides around in expensive chauffeur-driven cars, just a decade ago when there was no private TV channel he rode a knackered 70 CC two-stroke motorcycle to his daily tryst outside a restaurant in Lakshmi Chowk. Now, tepee man is an unmatchable butchoda (as Urdu wallahs call anyone who is long-winded and can make his oral farts sound deceptively meaningful), and retards of Lakshmi Chowk area would come around to hear him holding forth on the political situation. The condition was that each person in attendance present one packet of Gold Leaf cigarettes to tepee man. At the end of the evening this arsehole would return the cigarettes to the corner vendor for a small mark-down. The vendor who had earlier sold them at full price was happy and tepee man went home on his rattletrap motorcycle with a pocketful of cash.

Now he is an opinion maker. On his filthy hands he has the blood of a number of innocent persons belonging to minority groups. And he has to his credit the defeat of military politician Mush-a-Riffraff in the Battle of Lal Masjid. He has too to his credit the corrupting of millions of brain-dead television watchers of Pakistan. For the sake of Pakistan we could inflict euthanasia upon him for starters.

Then there are those two called Abba Cee – Punjabi for ‘that was daddy’. But first the story. When nightly visitors came to their seedy homes, they were told to go sit outside to shield their not so innocent eyes from what transpired in darkened rooms. As the visitors left and if some nosy neighbour asked, ‘Hey, who’s that?’, their response would be ‘Abba cee’ – that was daddy.

But nosy neighbours being what they are, were wise to the carryings on of the sordid homes of these two. And so they pair came to be surnamed Abba Cee and eventually Abbasi. However, the one who corrupted the civil service for some two decades plus wizened up and dropped the Abba Cee from his name. The other who masquerades as an opinion maker still carries this name. Before these two vermin agree to have their DNA testing done to discover that both are indeed of doubtful parentage, we need to perform euthanasia on them for the sake of Pakistan.

Though I name only three, the list of jokers impersonating as opinion makers on substandard TV channels and Urdu newspapers (that would be banned in a better country) is endless. A few dozen do need to be put away. And the sooner the better for the general health of Pakistan.

Then there are the vermin let loose when the Incubus of the Eleven Year-Long Night lifted the lid off the Great Sewer. The very ones with an abundance of facial hair who now defile the social, religious, ethical, moral landscape of this sorry land. We could perform euthanasia on a few thousand Bearded Ones to save Pakistan from wasting vast sums of the national exchequer on leeches who would be begging in the name of God on the streets of a better country.

Since we are at it, euthanasia is immediately needed upon one Wearer of the Thick Wig. In another country where idiots did not take themselves so seriously, this piece of rather shoddy work would have been an awful double for Rowan Atkinson playing Mr Bean. But this is Pakistan and one who should have been nothing more than a pierrot – and a pathetic one at that – sadly holds high office much to the detriment of this unfortunate land.

Euthanasia is also urgently needed upon a few who have had hair transplants on pates that continue to look as bald as ever. And on one also had a hair transplant and who rants and raves and huffs and puffs but who, despite help from the Pasha Who Took Dollars for Giving Away Bed Linen, fails to blow the house down. Since we will be at the good work for the sake of Pakistan, we could also line up at least a couple of hundred other clowns masquerading as politicians.

I hear euthanasia does not cost very much. They say performing mercy killing on one individual costs a fraction of that person’s monthly salary. So, whoever it is to do this good work, must begin forthwith. For goodness sake, this is the only way you can save Pakistan.

If doctors capable of performing mercy killing worry that the next of kin will book them for murder, they are wrong. Families of all these mentioned above will be happy to be rid of the scum. I can assure all willing doctors that the families will forgive them under laws introduced by the Incubus of the Eleven Year-Long Night.